


Vacant Angel

by Lusa



Series: Vacant Angel [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-03
Updated: 2010-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 01:13:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lusa/pseuds/Lusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hotel was a dive but he did not really care; if he'd ever had any standards to begin with he had abandoned them long ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vacant Angel

The hotel was a dive but he did not really care; if he'd ever had any standards to begin with he had abandoned them long ago. The room served its purpose and the occasional roach scuttling up the faded wallpaper acted as a fun knife target. It was not like he was planning on staying long. Somewhere along the lines of tracking down the man currently calling himself Jack Harkness (not his real name, any more than John Hart was his but they had gone through so many aliases across the years it was easier just to play along. Some days he could not even remember his actual name.) he had miscalculated, ending up in this sorry excuse for a planet (he couldn't remember it's name, either) a week early. Jack would be here, or had been here, depending on where you looked at these events in time, and with a week to kill he'd gotten the room.

He had even done his best to make it homey, and not just with the empty bottles or stray pills scattered under the bed. Hell, he had even hung up a picture or two, just like nice normal people did in cute little houses that had picket fences and a poodle in the yard. Admittedly the pictures had only been hung up after inhaling a bag of whatever it was all the cool kids were getting high off of in this century and the interior decorating had seemed like a good idea after that. Of course all the pictures were of Jack, and most of them weren't even pictures to begin with, just stills from security tapes or blurred background images from the occasional news report, since that was the way Jack seemed to feel like living his life. There was even a nice one he had taken himself on the wrist strap during that fiasco with Grey when he had chained Jack's bloody corpse to a wall in the Torchwood hub. It was his favorite.

He had brought a girl home the other night. Blonde, amazing legs, too young for him which had been the draw in the first place. He'd had a good view of her face when she walked in and saw the haphazard cluster of photos stuck to the wall. Lucky for her shock and disgust were both on his long list of turn-ons. He'd kicked her out afterwards anyways.

There were cracked tiles in the shower floor, and one of the light bulbs had burnt out which made it possible to ignore the mold and grime lurking in the corners, as well as the lines on his face reflected in the mirror. He decided not to look at it as he tossed his shirt to join the trail of clothes he had left across the floor. The shower water was tepid and smelled faintly of sulfur but he could not find it in himself to complain. It was a formality more than anything else and over soon enough, leaving him to wonder why hotels always had the most useless excuses for towels. You needed a dozen of the flimsy things to do any good, and he doubted pulling a gun on the housekeeper was going to improve things much.

The tightest black denim pants he owned and a shirt along the same lines, then boots and that red jacket. As outfits went it was simple but attention grabbing, not to mention all the useful pockets. He decided not to bother with the sword.

Tracking Jack was pathetically easy; blending in had never been one of his stronger skills. The bar was a far step down from the last one they had met in, with the sort of lighting kept deliberately dim to hide the unwashed tables and unsavory clientele. He knew Jack was aware of him the minute he stepped through the door like two magnets snapping together but forced himself not to glance his way, heading first to the bar and ordering without paying attention. Drink in hand he finally let himself glance out of the corner of his eye at his old partner.

He looked like shit, and even though he sat motionless at a corner booth John could tell he was drunk. He would have been working harder to keep that stark, miserable look out of his eyes otherwise. He did some quick mental calculations to work out when they were. Two months since eye-candy had died, then.

Shockingly enough he had still been on Earth when all those kids started babbling about aliens. Hell, he had even considered heading back to Cardiff and offering to help out, but changed his mind because who was he kidding? But then it had stopped and Jack had just vanished. Nothing on the vortex manipulator, no rumors of Torchwood, nothing. So he had done the one thing he could think to do, which was hunt down Gwen Cooper and convince her not to slam the door in his face when he knocked. She had anyways, which was just rude. After some more knocking and being forced to stand on the stoop at gun point with his hands where she could see them like a good boy he had gotten the whole fucked up story, beginning to end, which was honestly more than he had expected from her. He had not stayed long enough to give her a chance to get friendly, just taken off and now here he was. Not that exciting a story if he was honest.

Jack studiously avoided his gaze as he sauntered over and slid into the booth next to him. "You never take me anywhere nice." John complained, taking a sip of his drink and leaning back to get comfortable while his free hand slid possessively up Jack's thigh.

"What do you want?" Jack asked, finally looking at him with an expression that suggested he would love for him to disappear so he could get back to his little cloud of angst. Not happening, of course.

"Oh, that's nice. Who says I want anything?" He shot back in a tone of good-natured accusation.

"Sorry to impugn your honor, sweetheart. Now leave me alone." Jack grumbled, glancing away again, which was as good a time as any to pull out the small packet of powder he'd been keeping in the aforementioned useful pockets and empty it into his drink. Nothing fancy, just the usual drugs plus a slow acting poison thrown in to make his job a little easier.

It said a lot about Jack's present state of mind that he did not notice. The way he downed the drink before John even had to encourage him said even more, and after that it was pathetically easy to get him to stumble out of the booth and back to his room. The poison caught up with him when they reached the hotel lobby but that was what lifts were for and it wasn't like there was anyone around to notice anyways. Having him dead for a few minutes just made he job a bit easier, that was all. He wondered if dying would sober him up.

He had forgotten how good Jack looked stripped and handcuffed to a bed. Other couples might have said the same about sunsets or candlelight but in his opinion they were either deluding themselves or missing out. Peeling off his own shirt and jacket he picked up Jack's coat, fingers prickling on the wool as he slid into it before absently rummaged through the pockets for no other reason than he was bored. There was a neatly folded photograph in the breast pocket and wasn't that an overly sentimental gesture? It was of Jack and eye-candy, and if he had to bet he would have guessed Gwen had snapped it at random without giving either of them much warning. Jack had had time to turn on that charming, God's gift to humanity smirk whereas Ianto just looked a bit awkward and unsure what to do with himself with a smile halfway to his lips and a confused expression. Cute. He taped it to the wall with the others.

He heard the harsh gasp of Jack fighting his way back into life and the way he thrashed against the handcuffs and glared answered the question about sobering up. It was kind of adorable. He grinned, knowing he looked damn good standing there, bare chest framed by the dark gray of the coat and those pants clinging in all the right places.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jack demanded, still tugging at those cuffs like it was going to make the slightest bit of difference.

The grin slowly faded as he crawled up the bed until he was straddling Jack's hips, could feel the heat of his bare skin radiating through the denim as he stared him in the eyes. "Helping you." He said simply, truthfully. He was good at lies but bad at honesty, so on the rare occasions he chose to use it it was impossible to mistake.

Leaning closer until their lips were just a breath away he asked, "How badly do you want me to distract you from your life?" He smirked as Jack surged up to meet his mouth in a desperate reply, kissing hard enough to bruise. His answer, then. His hips sawed forward, twisting against the restraints and John ground against him, writhing in response to the delicious friction. Fuck he'd missed this.

Absently as his fingers began to rake down Jack's bare chest he wondered how long it would take him to notice the pictures.


End file.
